Those who were not of this world found it hard to understand how knights felt about dragons. It was an emotion drilled into them in an endless cycle of brainwashing from childhood onward.
Even Liszt himself, obsessed as he was with dragons and enamored of their beauty of power, could not compare to the reverence the native inhabitants held for dragons. It was an emotion compounded of many feelings, warped to a pathological degree—reverence like worshipping a god, mixed with the possessiveness of wanting to destroy what one could not possess.
A few decades ago, Marquis Merlin had once said, while communicating with the Sapphire Dragon, that if it did not grant him a contracted dragon-domain lord, he would slaughter it.
That might have been a joke. Or perhaps he had only dared say it while the Sapphire Dragon was asleep.
But now, the aged Marquis Merlin could no longer utter those wild words of his youth. He merely stared at the Little Fire Dragon, Rio, and praised it again and again. "So beautiful!"
Rio had always looked down on humans, so it was deeply displeased at being repeatedly summoned by Liszt and gawked at like a monkey in a show. It turned and gave Thorn Castle a cold glance, then beat its wings and soared into the sky, swiftly vanishing amid the heavy snow.
"Ah, the Fire Dragon—the Fire Dragon flew away!" Meiopal cried out from the side.
Liszt explained, "Rio is just taking a turn in the sky. It will be back shortly." Dragonheart Telegraph Code allowed him and Rio to remain in contact at any time; it was a communication technique that spanned immense distances.
The little princess Angela supported Marquis Merlin. She had seen the Sapphire Dragon since childhood and had practically grown up alongside a